Promoter Charlie Vest unveiled a new program at Atomic Speedway: SMART. It stands for Scholastic Motorsports Association for Racing and Technology, and it hopes to grow youth involvement in the sport.
“There [is] a constant buzz about how we can get more young people involved in racing,” Vest said. “Being a racer, I know if that you put a kid in front of a race car, and he or she can smell it and touch it, that would make all the difference.”
SMART will have 10 area schools participating, with each paired with a sport mod this season. Vest consulted with the schools as well as Trey Becker, VP of Business Development for UNOH, to develop a career path for interested students.
“I proposed a real world experience in conjunction with an established education system that would also be a feeder program for UNOH,” said Vest. “This program would be mentor based.”
Vest made starts in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and ARCA. He hopes to parlay lsome of that experience and apply it to SMART.
“From racing in NASCAR I learned there are so many jobs on a race team that do not involve driving the car or being on the pit crew,” Vest said. “For example, there are careers that involved design, graphics, promotion, and accounting.”
To get SMART started, Vest had to convince school boards that the program would offer educational value.
“The program is more about students working hard, applying themselves to reach a goal,” said Vest. “I had to convince them that racing is a team sport — and it is actually safer than many other high school sports.”
Then Vest had to see if the race teams would have interest.
“The entire group in the sport mod division is all in for the program,” Vest said. “They are engaged and want to help. We will also be enlisting specialists in every behind-the-scenes area related to racing.”
Charlie Vest considers SMART the first step in getting youth involved in the sport. He also plans to build a .25 midget track within Atomic Speedway.
“There are no .25 midget programs nearby,” said Vest. “We’ll be building a track at Atomic patterned after Millbridge [Speedway] in North Carolina,” said Vest. “We’ll get even more youth at a younger age involved in racing.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
